100 Days of Healing – Day 38

I really struggle with fear of what people I care about are doing. Even a little bit of unknown can send my anxiety skyrocketing, and when some of my family or other people close to me are out and about, it can be really challenging for me to stay calm. I like for everyone to be home safe. I like me to be home safe too.

Part of it is I don’t trust them. And I’m not sure why in particular? Because none of them have given me a reason not to trust them. But instead of being happy about what they’re doing or the opportunities they have or going about my own business, I worry endlessly about their well being and safety. It is emotionally exhausting, and not something I even want to do. It’s one of the instances in which a PTSD symptom seems impossible for me to get a handle on or control, and I feel scared and beaten by it. It can really affect my sleep, and certainly affects my ability to be calm.

I don’t go out much at the moment unless it’s necessary because just getting back to full steam with work has been challenging enough. I also like to have a plan, and planning is hard because I only have so much mental energy before I burn out for the week and have to recharge. So I work hard as much as I can, then get to a point in the day (which is earlier in the day as the end of the week nears) that that’s all I can do and I need to rest.

It’s infuriating at times, because I feel stuck this way and don’t yet see a way past it.

4 thoughts on “100 Days of Healing – Day 38”

I also wish everyone would just stay safe at home, ugh. That definitely sounds emotionally exhausting. Maybe the more they go off on their own more and come back okay, you can let your guard down a little? Or you can check in with them more often?

Maybe… you could tell them that you care about them and worry about them and that that’s why you’re checking in? And then they would have an explanation for why you’re checking in? Or you could set a limit about how often you’ll check in so that it doesn’t get to be too much, like once a day or every other day or whenever. When my family was on a trip, my dad and I called them every evening to see how they were doing and how the trip was, etc, and when we weren’t talking to them I could put some worry out of my mind because I knew we had talked to them recently and would talk again soon and had no reason to think anything was wrong. The only problem with this plan is that it backfires when they don’t call or don’t pick up and I think everything is wrong… ideally the way to get through that I think would be to think of different interpretations, like their phone died, they’re out of cell service range, they’re eating dinner, they’re busy, they’re exhausted, etc.
That reply got to be longer than I originally intended!